using words like “numbness” and “sleep”, as well as explicitly stating “I am nobody”. Moreover, Plath portrays this through the idea of loss of memories – she describes the memories of her husband and child as “little smiling hooks” that “catch onto [her] skin”, this imagery of the memories being outside her body and detached further manufactures a sense of loss of self as they “hook” onto her, almost like they are catching onto her - despite her being willing to let them go, they cling to her in a way that is described in a painful way through the words “hook” and “catch” – this idea is reinforced as she states “I am sick of baggage”. To contrast, in Sexton’s poem the loss of self is portrayed by the overtaking by the ‘suicide’ of the body – it is stated that she has “possessed the enemy”, and is taking his “magic”, this idea of the suicide encompassing the person emphasises a lack of personal self through the overwhelming nature of the suicidal feelings. Moreover, Sexton describes this sense of loss through the idea of detachment from the body, as the way Sexton is writing about her body is disjointed; she describes her body in a very foreign, disconnected way through the technical references to the “cornea” and “leftover urine”, furthermore she describes having “rested, drooling at the mouth-hole”, further creating a sense of detachment from the body due to the unusual, external description of her own body through words that seem technical and practical rather than those which convey a sense of emotion, thus establishing a ‘loss’ of self in a loss of connection associated with her body.
Remains
By Simon Armitage
On another occasion, we got sent out to tackle looters raiding a bank. And one of them legs it up the road, probably armed, possibly not. Well myself and somebody else and somebody else are all of the same mind, so all three of us open fire. Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear I see every round as it rips through his life – I see broad daylight on the other side. So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out, pain itself, the image of agony. One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts back into his body. Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry. End of story, except not really. His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol I walk right over it week after week. Then I’m home on leave. But I blink and he bursts again through the doors of the bank. Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not. Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds. And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out – he’s here in my head when I close my eyes, dug in behind enemy lines, not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sandsmothered land or six-feet-under in desert sand, but near to the knuckle, here and now, his bloody life in my bloody hands.
Anne Sexton
